As I Lay Dying
by spero spiro
Summary: [There were a lot of things that were much, much worse than simply giving up everything for someone I was never going to be able to see again.] AxelRoxas Companion to If You’re Gone, Your Eyes Open and One Life


**As I Lay Dying**

**Note: This would finally be the last of the four Axel-centric stories I promised to do. There's… really not very much to be said. This is the companion to the first three. _If You're Gone_, _Your Eyes Open_, and _One Life_ are those stories, and each story stands on its own, but work well together.**

**Description: There were a lot of things that were much, much worse than simply giving up everything for someone I was never going to be able to see again. AxelRoxas Companion to If You're gone, Your Eyes Open and One Life**

**Disclaimer: You know the drill. I don't own it, I ask you not to sue me.**

Giving up my half-life wasn't the worst thing I'd done for Roxas. There were a lot of things that were much, much worse than simply giving up everything for someone I was never going to be able to see again. Kidnapping Kairi. Trying to turn Sora into a Heartless. Trying to hurt Sora… But then, looking at Sora was too painful. So, as I lay dying, I told him what I'd never told anyone: Roxas made me feel like I had a heart. And when I said it, I meant it, because Roxas made me laugh and feel happiness, and

"_We're going to die!" Roxas was _cackling_ as we tore through the halls, darting through dark portals and running, running, running… _

when he was upset, I felt sadness.

"_We don't have hearts, Axel. We can't feel anything." It was common for him to spit those words at me when I tried to tell him that he made feel _something_ deep inside the core of my existence. Or non-existence. Or whatever I was or wasn't… I felt, and when he slammed the door behind him again, I cried inside._

When he was angry, and we fought, I felt anger.

"_I'm leaving, Axel." It was just like that. So plain. So simple, as though those words would bandage the bleeding wound left of my heart. I slammed him against the wall and the air cracked, and I told him that if I didn't have a heart, it was because he was tearing it out of me._

Roxas taught me a wide array of emotions, whether he knew it or not. Because of the way we were and the secrecy we swore ourselves to and the situations we found ourselves in, I learned jealousy, and

_Watching him every day with _that girl_ was maddening. I couldn't say anything because the time wasn't right, but she had the ability to jump in and out of his life as she willed. I had… nothing. No memento of him, nor the ability to talk to or touch or feel him again, and there _she_ was, talking to him and smiling for him and…_

indifference, and

"_Where is he?" The words were quiet and as gentle as Demyx could manage. I turned away, leaving him to not know how I really felt inside. _

"_I don't know." I told him flatly._

loneliness,

_When the day was done, and the god-awful silence descended over me, I sat in the windowsill and watched the great, heart-shaped moon in the sky with contempt. It was an endless reminder of how close we were… what we didn't have… everything. Except it taunted me more, because it had seen everything I'd ever done with Roxas and the man who lived in her laughed endlessly at me for what, who, I didn't have._

and love.

"_Please don't leave me here with this." _

"_I didn't say I was going to. I haven't moved. I won't."_

"_I… Roxas…"_

"_Hush. They'll hear you."_

As I lay dying, I felt a thousand emotions I never knew pulsing through me with the last of my lifeblood. _Regret, pain, loss…_ Everything pushing through my veins like a curse I had no control over. Maybe having a heart was worse than not having one, if these emotions were this intense without one. I couldn't see Roxas in Sora, but he made me feel like I had a heart, like Roxas had… Except I only felt that I had a heart with Sora because he made me hurt so bad for what I couldn't have. I silently begged him not to cry, because Roxas never had. He didn't. I stared up at the nothingness above me, and

"_Let's meet again in the next life…"_

"_I'll be waiting."_

"_Silly. Just because you have a next life…"_

in those, my last seconds, and even as I faded completely away, I felt something I never had felt before. Sora stared helplessly at me, and inside his eyes I finally saw Roxas in him. I looked at those eyes and felt _hope_.

**End**


End file.
